Partners Research Computing: A Key Component of the Hospitals' Research Mission

“I think it’s fair to say that Research Computing is now viewed as an essential asset to the Partners research community,” said Diane Keogh, Corporate Director, Partners Research Computing. “Because of the work we’ve done in the five years that we’ve been formally a separate department, the 8,000 investigators and research support staff in the Partners system can rely on us for infrastructure, administrative, and clinical research support.”   The department is organized into five groups: scientific services and infrastructure, genomics IT, specimen banking, RPDR, and research administrative systems. Here’s what they’re all about:

Enterprise Research Infrastructure & Services (ERIS) is managed by Brent Richter.  ERIS is composed of two service-oriented, research-focused teams who directly support the research communities within the academic medical centers:

• The centralized systems team focuses on scientific and technical computing, massive storage services, data security, and large-project infrastructure and informatics needs. These include HPC, “a super-computing hub to allow investigators access to computational clusters and storage that permit ultra heavy-duty use”; support for open-source servers and applications; and support for hosted services such as DIPR--the cloud computing service and database service.  Through the HPC facility, bioinformatics and scientific database services are available.

“Researchers often make use of programs written for highly specialized purposes that are typically open source and are not normally supported by Partners,” said Keogh.  ERIS provides the services for HPC clusters, bioinformatics and analysis tools, server hosting, large-scale storage, and consultative assistance in support of your projects. 

• The MGH and BWH Site Support teams supports research devices including non-standard Partners lap-/desktops, Linux and Mac, and research-oriented services. Through these site teams, BWH Research Information Computing Systems (RICS) and MGH Research Computing, all the services of ERIS are delivered direct to the researcher.  These services include most of what you will find on this site except for the research enterprise applications that are supported by the dedicated groups below.

These ERIS teams provide a customer-focsed interface for the research community into Partners IS.  We can provide advocacy and direction to the many collaborative projects and consultations that involve Partners IS (Information Security, Network Engineering, or other groups).

• Download a .pdf presentation of Partners Research Computing Services
• Download a .pdf presentation on our High Performance Computing Cluster.

The Partners Healthcare Center for Personalized Genetic Medicine (PCPGM) group of eight IT members and a Hewlett Packard development team work with Sandy Aronson to translate and integrate the science of genetics and genomics into medical practice. The wave of the future, “personalized medicine” – creating a genetic and genomic profile of a patient and using it to help in diagnosis and treatment – will require increasing amounts of genetic data that must be gathered, organized, and securely stored, and IS is closely involved in developing the infrastructure for this to happen.

The Partners Biorepository for Personalized Medicine Team is developing enterprise-wide systems infrastructure to enable the collection, storage and distribution of specimens at partners HealthCare. The team is driving the enhancements and integration of existing systems and developing some new systems. The vision is to further scientific discovery by providing investigators with ready, easy access to biospecimens. The team is managed by Natalie Boutin.

The Research Enterprise Applications group is the largest with 22 IS staff working with manager Scott McNeal.“This group supports administrative systems that support research,” said Keogh. “These are both vendor applications and internally developed applications that include grants and contracts, research ventures and licenses, corporate-sponsored research, and the Institutional Review Board.”

The Research Patient Data Registry (RPDR) is supported by the dedicated team of nearly a dozen developers and support personnel.  RPDR is a centralized clinical data registry/warehouse managed by Shawn Murphy, M.D. The RPDR gathers data from various hospital systems and stores it in one place, bringing clinical information to a researcher’s fingertips and ensuring the security of patient information. “The RPDR is a one-of-a-kind asset and a major plus for Partners overall,” said Keogh. “There’s nothing else that allows a researcher access to a powerful query tool that they can use themselves.”

These five areas make Research Computing a valuable asset to Partners. “Nearly one-fourth of Partners revenue overall comes from research – about a billion dollars a year,” said Keogh. The majority of grant funding received is used for overhead, to provide services and infrastructure like that offered by Research Computing. And we are often seen as an aid to getting grant funding in the first place. Public and private sponsors of research can see that, because we have in place things like super-computing clusters and seamless administrative support, there are fewer barriers for researchers do deal with, and our researchers may have a leg up in being granted funding.”

(from Partners Healthcare Information Systems Newsletter, 9.1.06)